I was very pleased with the outcome of this batch tonight. I only got a slice of each. The 6 and 1 sauce with the pinch of cayenne was a great substitute for the crushed red pep. The crust was very thin, yet fluffly and crispy at the same time. Even the cornicione was a joy to eat.

We're getting into personal preference here, but, for traditional NY pizza, I think you're pushing the boundaries of the oil in the dough. High oil doughs aren't necessarily bad, it's just more American style than NY.

Your thickness factor is well within the spectrum of NY style pies you see on this forum, but if you compare it to your avatar, it's a little on the thick side. If you're at 10 oz. for a 13" pie, I'd say next time go with around 9 oz. Plug all your ingredients into a dough calculator and reduce everything until you hit a thickness factor of .075- that's about right for NY style.

That's about it. Your crumb, at least on the slice in the photo, is a tiny bit dense, but for your stone, I think it's very respectable. From my vantage point, you're just one stone away from that 'master class pizza' you mentioned earlier.

Thanks everyone. Scott - bake time was 7 minutes at 550 degrees. I knocked off about 4 minutes, oven's max is 550. As for the oil, I'm just using the recipie my buddy from NY told me to use (scaled down for home use though)

"you're just one stone away from that 'master class pizza' you mentioned earlier..." - Scott123

Yeah, thnaks to you, I've got soapstone on the brain! :D

Thanks again for constructive criticism and compliments. The Pizza tasted great!

No secret. True short story....The sauce is from my good freind, Jimmy from Da Bronx (it's impossible to make a bad pizza with a name like that, eh?) He's the one who taught me most of the tricks I know. It was 4 years ago...I'd just gotten 'laid off' from a major mortgage company, and I walked right into the pizzeria shop across from our house and said "I wanna learn how to make that pizza" Jimmy says "Why the F should I show you?". I replied, "Because I'm unemployed I can't afford to pay for them anymore..." He laughed. We became fast freinds, he hired me and taught me recepies he's been using for 25 years.

Here's the sauce recipie. from my other post. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11675.0.html.

The dough, I've been deviating from the 'Jimmy' just a tad, recipie to achieve a decent result in our home oven. This is the current dough recipie:6.5 oz of filtered drinking water, room temp (64% hydration)Just under a half a teaspoon of ADY (fleichshman's. Any more than 1tsp and it blows up way to much)1 teaspoon of salt1 and a half tablespoons of Vegetable oil (its been turning out a little better than the Olive Oil lately)wisk that all together really well, with an actual wisk...Then add 10.5oz of Sunflower Markets generic HiGluten flour (Called manager and he confirmed it to be conagra's generic super market brand? He may or may not be bulls**ting me) but it is 9 grams of protien per half cup = 15% I have a Kitchen Aid Classic. I start the mixer at speed 3, then up to 4 and down to 2 for the last 3 minutes. Mixing time is 10-12 minutes. It usually sticks to the bottom of the bowl, at about 2" in diameter when finally ready. Only thing I don't do, but would really like to, is use fresh (wet) compressed yeast... Bronx Jimmy swears by it. And I am a sucker for nostalgic unbasised food-lore. Easier to get a royal flush in vegas, than it is to track down some fresh yeast...

Then I weigh out and ball up 2x 9.2 ounces balls and put them in tupperware, and they go right in the fridge. no proofing.. Just slow retarding.. They do still expand, but are nice and 'taught' to the touch. not that fluffy at all, only because I am trying to emulate the pizzeria protocol I worked at. I hate it when the doughs look great in the pan , but then deflate after you pick them up.

I build my crust into the doughball first. Then I 'walk-out' the dough with my fingers, leaving a little "hill" in the middle. I flip it upsidedown and walk it out a little more then hand strech on a smoothe surface about 5-7 rotations. Then it's up onto the knuckles for some edge strecthing. It gets a couple faster speed air tosses, where that little hill in the center flattens out to the same flatness, respectively. And then I've got an evenly thick blank round , ready for toppings.

I then spread the tomato sauce, I sprinkle a blend of finely grated Asagio, Parmasean, and Romano around the red pie (not very much at all)

Then comes the Mozz and other final topping, and into the oven she goes... :pizza:

Oh, and I dunk the doughballs into a 50/50 semolina/bread flour dish and spread some of the 50/50 around the stretching counter-top.. That is what you saw underneath the crust/ slice.Hope this helps.

I'd like to know the type/brand/thickness of the stone and whether the oven has a convection feature and, if so, is it used? Also, is that semolina or cornmeal on the bottom of the pizza?

Peter

Hey Pete. The stone I think is 15" and a half inch thick? Does that sound right? Got it at Target of all places. Oven is just an everyday 'gas' oven - no convection. 550 max temp.... And yes, that is semolina on the bottom and sides. Good eye, can't believe you could spot that from my subpar camera shots.

Great story, Theo. I'm pretty close with most the pizzeria guys I deal with, but if I ever asked them to teach me, I have no doubt where they'd tell me to go :) Not that they aren't nice guys, but, this is an incredibly competitive market and you've got to hold your cards close.

Thanks for posting the recipe. I can see what's going on with the oil, now. According to my calculations, you're at 7%. I could say that 7% is extremely high for NY style, but, as far as I'm concerned, 7% is so high, it ceases to be NY style at all. Now, if Jimmy's pie happens to be your bliss, I don't want to step on your toes or anything. If his is the pie you're striving for and he says use x amount of oil, use x amount of oil. You don't mess with people from the Bronx :) As I look at the pie in your avatar, though, it's difficult to tell because you can barely see the crumb, but I'm reasonably certain that that pie is not 7%. I think they might have been oiling the rim before baking (which makes dough oil content even trickier to detect), but, as far as the dough ratios are concerned, it's a typical lean NY style pie- most likely no higher than 3%.

Jimmy was using Kyrol, right? Kyrol's 14% protein. As I said before, the nutritional label on flour is worthless because all the numbers are rounded. The Sunflower high gluten is not 15%. My best guess is 13-ish. It's definitely lower than Kyrol. I bring this up because if you are trying to emulate Jimmy's pie and going high oil, you really should stick to his protein level as well, as that much oil will take a slightly weaker flour and impair gluten development (oven spring).

I took your numbers and converted everything to baker's percent format and used the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html to come up with the dough formulation presented below. In so doing, I used the 64% hydration figure you posted since 6.5 ounces of water by weight would be a hydration of 61.91%, not 64%. Based on the total dough batch weight and dough ball weights of 9.10 ounces, and assuming a pizza size of 13", I calculated a corresponding thickness factor of 9.10/(3.14159 x 6.5 x 6.5) = 0.068576.

scott123 is correct on the high amount of oil and its inconsistency with the NY style. However, with a thickness factor of only 0.07, the large amount of oil may well insure that the finished crust isn't too dry and cracker-like or overly crispy when baked with your particular oven/stone configuration. If you decide to reduce the amount of oil, you might want to increase the crust thickness (thickness factor). The expanded dough calculating tool makes it easy to make such changes (using the Thickness Factor option).

Like scott123, I place the upper limit of 3% oil for the NY style.

In any event, I think your pizzas look great and I enjoy reading about your exploits.

I am glad I joined the forum. To be in the company of individuals who are striving for similar results, is great for me. I'll be honest though, I get a little intimidated when it comes to scaling recipies up or down. I can't wait to give that 'Dough Calculator' a swing. I need to start learning how to get technical with my measurments. I truly want to recreate the same pie over and over.

Brother Jimmy was kind enough to be one of the few old school pizza guys to part with his wisdom. I may be incorrect with the scaled down measurments. I do get oil happy. I've gotta call him tonight and get a direct idea of how much oil he actually uses. But, we're talkin' about a guy who uses a "golf-ball" sized piece of fresh yeast and just tosses it in the Hobart. He says the water temp doesnt really matter (its already hot as Hell in that kitchen of his). So he just uses filtered water through the whole restaurant, and he absolutely always laughs at the concept of great pizza being defined by it's "crappy local tap water". he always says, "you want NY style water? Just add flouride and chlorine to your water...cause dats what they use ta kill all dat crap in their local tap water.."

I just called him to verify the old recepie...Here is what he siad:

Here is his 50lb doudh recepie from the shop: I wrote this down 4 years ago - paper still has oil stain and rock hard dough residue on it...)1oz fresh yeast ("golfball sized")1 cup of salt4 cups Olive Oil.......3 empty cans of water....from the large 7/11 crushed tomatoes can..what ever the hell amount that is (300grams x 3 cans?).wisk it all together and let it sit for 5-10 minutes.Then 50lb bag of KYROL.

He says, "I don't put sugar in NOTHin'"...Which should put a smile on all diabetics' faces... But horrify those poor unfortunate, Gluten Intolerent souls...roaming the Earth...unable to enjoy slices of Heaven.

Please, if you can, let me know what technical specs of his 50lb dough recipie is

Thanks again for all your critiques and compliments. I am really learning now.

That dough calculator is only in percentages... Difficulty figuring it outThe 7/11 cans say 300grams on the label. I would imagine that water wouldnt differ too much in weight... But I dont want to half-ass anything anymore. My digital scale goes up to 10 lbs. I'll have to carefully weigh everything out sometime this week. Forgive my ignorance on the subject... I can operate a full fledge recording studio, but I can't figure out grams from pounds from ounces.... Maybe it's time to give one of my old pot-dealing college buddies a call, to break it all down for me :D I know they'd probably say, "Duuuuuude...you've come to the right place, bro...... 16oz to a pound, eight eighths to an oz....etc;"

All of the dough calculating tools (see http://www.pizzamaking.com/dough_tools.html) are based on baker's percents. It's far easier to scale recipes using weights rather than volumes. I'm sure you can grasp the math with a little effort. For a couple of basic articles on baker's percents, see http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/bakerspercentage.pdf and the multi-part tutorial at http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/03/22/bakers-percentage-1/.

That dough calculator is only in percentages... Difficulty figuring it outThe 7/11 cans say 300grams on the label. I would imagine that water wouldnt differ too much in weight... But I dont want to half-ass anything anymore. My digital scale goes up to 10 lbs. I'll have to carefully weigh everything out sometime this week. Forgive my ignorance on the subject... I can operate a full fledge recording studio, but I can't figure out grams from pounds from ounces.... Maybe it's time to give one of my old pot-dealing college buddies a call, to break it all down for me :D I know they'd probably say, "Duuuuuude...you've come to the right place, bro...... 16oz to a pound, eight eighths to an oz....etc;"

I have followed your threads and advice for quite some time and find them all very refreshing, informative and usable. I also like the way you critique some members efforts and try to help them advance in their pizza making abilities...Kudos and Thumbs up! All of us can learn from it...I know I have.

You also intrigued me to look into a soapstone replacement for my old cordierite stone. But I have one question to ask...I'd love to have your personal dough recipe and would like to see a pic of one of your finished pies! ;D

Given all the info you have dispersed so far, I'm dying to see how you do it. Perhaps post a video from start to finish on YouTube??? Man, that would be greatly appreciated.

Ok... I figured out the Lehman's Calculator and made the best dough I've made in my life yet. Dough didn't even stick to the bottom of the mixing bowl. negligible bowl residue amount... I've never had that happen before. The balls weighed .3oz less than the calculator said though - followed everything to the 'T'. regardless, these are the most pizzeria-like dough balls I've ever made at home. Thank you...

I will make two pies tomorrow night after the fridge does it's magic. Here is the calculator screen shot:

I have followed your threads and advice for quite some time and find them all very refreshing, informative and usable. I also like the way you critique some members efforts and try to help them advance in their pizza making abilities...Kudos and Thumbs up! All of us can learn from it...I know I have.

You also intrigued me to look into a soapstone replacement for my old cordierite stone. But I have one question to ask...I'd love to have your personal dough recipe and would like to see a pic of one of your finished pies! ;D

Given all the info you have dispersed so far, I'm dying to see how you do it. Perhaps post a video from start to finish on YouTube??? Man, that would be greatly appreciated.

Or even some pics on here would do the trick.

Looking forward to it...and I'm sure many other members, too. :chef:

P.S.: Don't forget to include your sauce recipe!

Mike, thank you for your very kind words. I have followed your threads and valued your contribution as well.

I've been kind of procrastinating on the camera front- alright, fine, I've been really procrastinating on the camera front :-D I keep waiting for the prices on the Flip style cameras to come down- they keep adding more features, though, so I think the $170ish price tag is here to stay. Just this second, I popped over to ebay to see what kind of deals there were on a Flip ultrahd and the prices seemed reasonable. That's probably the route I'll take. I'm going to keep my eye out a little longer, but I promise you, you'll have video from me soon. And it will be my entire process in tremendous detail- soup to nuts.

As far as my sauce recipe goes... that I probably won't be sharing :( Although I have my eye on consulting professionally as well as possibly catering large events, a part of me is hoping to eventually have my own place. I have no issues with my dough recipe floating around (it's honestly almost always changing anyway), but, because of the hyper competitive nature of the pizza business in the NY area, I feel like I need to keep my sauce cards close to my chest.

As I'm sure you're aware, though, I do suffer from a really bad case of male answer syndrome and can't keep my mouth shut, so, if someone really wanted my sauce, my old posts reveal pretty much all the details. I spent more than a decade reverse engineering the sauce of my favorite local pizzeria, but, at the end of the day, it's not rocket science. The tomato should be the main player- everything else is just there to supplement the tomato flavor, not detract from it. I'm also a very firm believer in fresh garlic, not dried and that dried basil is an abomination.

You might have added more water then you did in your first weighing hence the difference of 82 grams. It doesn't take much of water to get a difference of 82 grams.

Mike,

I can understand that it doesn't take much water to get a difference of 82 grams. Thanks :)

I weighed the container with water again after I last posted and saw my scales goes to kg. I didn't know that before, because I never weighed anything that heavy before. What I thought was grams was really kg. :-D I checked the weight of the sauce on the label of the can and it was 2.98 kg. I only then took the water to where the sauce usually is and the water also weighed 2.98 kg. Sorry for any confusion I caused.

I will make two pies tomorrow night after the fridge does it's magic. Here is the calculator screen shot:

I think you're in good shape, Theo. The only thing I'd adjust, as I mentioned before, is the thickness factor. 10 oz. is a bit too much dough for a 13" pie- at least a 13" pie that resembles the pie that you're striving for in your avatar. I really hate launching a pie that's close to the size of my stone, but if you can try stretching these to 14" I think you'll be better off.

Mike, thank you for your very kind words. I have followed your threads and valued your contribution as well.

I've been kind of procrastinating on the camera front- alright, fine, I've been really procrastinating on the camera front :-D I keep waiting for the prices on the Flip style cameras to come down- they keep adding more features, though, so I think the $170ish price tag is here to stay. Just this second, I popped over to ebay to see what kind of deals there were on a Flip ultrahd and the prices seemed reasonable. That's probably the route I'll take. I'm going to keep my eye out a little longer, but I promise you, you'll have video from me soon. And it will be my entire process in tremendous detail- soup to nuts.

As far as my sauce recipe goes... that I probably won't be sharing :( Although I have my eye on consulting professionally as well as possibly catering large events, a part of me is hoping to eventually have my own place. I have no issues with my dough recipe floating around (it's honestly almost always changing anyway), but, because of the hyper competitive nature of the pizza business in the NY area, I feel like I need to keep my sauce cards close to my chest.

As I'm sure you're aware, though, I do suffer from a really bad case of male answer syndrome and can't keep my mouth shut, so, if someone really wanted my sauce, my old posts reveal pretty much all the details. I spent more than a decade reverse engineering the sauce of my favorite local pizzeria, but, at the end of the day, it's not rocket science. The tomato should be the main player- everything else is just there to supplement the tomato flavor, not detract from it. I'm also a very firm believer in fresh garlic, not dried and that dried basil is an abomination.

Thanks again.

Scott, if you wanted to open a NY style pizzeria, I think you should consider the central Ohio area, maybe the northwest side of Columbus. I think Dublin OH would be perfect. There is a serious pizza deficiency there. ;D

When you use the Lehmann dough calculating tool, and you are using a basic home stand mixer, like a KitchenAid stand mixer, my advice is to use a bowl residue factor of 1.5%. That will usually yield a dough ball that is a bit larger than you are targeting but the dough ball can be trimmed back to the desired weight.

I think that there may be a problem with the dough formulation you posted in Reply 25 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11684.msg108030.html#msg108030 or else there is some missing information somewhere. I took the 2.98 kg weight figure Norma provided for the water in one 7/11 can and multiplied that by three (for three cans worth). That gives us 8.94 kg, or 8940 grams. That converts to 315.34 ounces (8940/28.35), or 19.71 (315.34/16) pounds. If the entire 50 pound bag of flour is used, the baker's percent for the water comes to 19.41/50 = 39.42%. That figure would be far too low for a NY style. Also, with respect to the fresh yeast, the corresponding baker's percent would be 1/(50 x 16) = 0.125%. That value, also, would be too low in my opinion. Do you think it is possible that only enough flour is added to make a total dough batch weight of 50 pounds? I haven't run the numbers on this scenario but can once you have a chance to respond to clarify. It is also possible that the water in the can doesn't come right up to the top since that would be cumbersome to handle.

Scott, if you wanted to open a NY style pizzeria, I think you should consider the central Ohio area, maybe the northwest side of Columbus. I think Dublin OH would be perfect. There is a serious pizza deficiency there. ;D

Thanks for the invite, but I'll always be in a New York state of mind ;D I'd chew off a limb before I'd drive into Manhattan, but, other than that, I consider this sacred ground. Food means everything to me, and although I've got pizza on the brain, I also occasionally worship at the Indian and Chinese restaurant altar. I've made pretty good strides with chicken and broccoli, but until I can make a kick butt chicken tikka masala myself, I can never leave :)

Mike, thank you for your very kind words. I have followed your threads and valued your contribution as well.

I've been kind of procrastinating on the camera front- alright, fine, I've been really procrastinating on the camera front :-D I keep waiting for the prices on the Flip style cameras to come down- they keep adding more features, though, so I think the $170ish price tag is here to stay. Just this second, I popped over to ebay to see what kind of deals there were on a Flip ultrahd and the prices seemed reasonable. That's probably the route I'll take. I'm going to keep my eye out a little longer, but I promise you, you'll have video from me soon. And it will be my entire process in tremendous detail- soup to nuts.

As far as my sauce recipe goes... that I probably won't be sharing :( Although I have my eye on consulting professionally as well as possibly catering large events, a part of me is hoping to eventually have my own place. I have no issues with my dough recipe floating around (it's honestly almost always changing anyway), but, because of the hyper competitive nature of the pizza business in the NY area, I feel like I need to keep my sauce cards close to my chest.

As I'm sure you're aware, though, I do suffer from a really bad case of male answer syndrome and can't keep my mouth shut, so, if someone really wanted my sauce, my old posts reveal pretty much all the details. I spent more than a decade reverse engineering the sauce of my favorite local pizzeria, but, at the end of the day, it's not rocket science. The tomato should be the main player- everything else is just there to supplement the tomato flavor, not detract from it. I'm also a very firm believer in fresh garlic, not dried and that dried basil is an abomination.

Thanks again.

Aha...looks like we're getting somewhere with your sauce recipe ;)

In regards to the cam...I saw the Flip cam UHD at Best Buy for a $147. You might want to jump on that if it has all the features you need. But the price may still come down, who knows.

Good luck with your endeavor of opening your own shop. NY is a tough market.

Norma,

I hear you. I made the same mistake when I first got my new digitial scale and it screwed things up for me royally. That's life, though. ;D

Thanks for the invite, but I'll always be in a New York state of mind ;D I'd chew off a limb before I'd drive into Manhattan, but, other than that, I consider this sacred ground. Food means everything to me, and although I've got pizza on the brain, I also occasionally worship at the Indian and Chinese restaurant altar. I've made pretty good strides with chicken and broccoli, but until I can make a kick butt chicken tikka masala myself, I can never leave :)

I understand. I went through a food depression when I moved here 20 years ago. It's getting better, but the pizza is god awful. It's my opinion that a good NY style pizza joint around here would be a slam dunk because there is NO competition. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

I understand. I went through a food depression when I moved here 20 years ago. It's getting better, but the pizza is god awful. It's my opinion that a good NY style pizza joint around here would be a slam dunk because there is NO competition. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Jay, with a few tweaks and a little more practice, you're not that far from making the quintessential NY pie. How about opening a place yourself?

That gives us 8.94 kg, or 8940 grams. That converts to 315.34 ounces (8940/28.35), or 19.71 (315.34/16) pounds. If the entire 50 pound bag of flour is used, the baker's percent for the water comes to 19.41/50 = 39.42%. That figure would be far too low for a NY style. Also, with respect to the fresh yeast, the corresponding baker's percent would be 1/(50 x 16) = 0.125%. That value, also, would be too low in my opinion. Do you think it is possible that only enough flour is added to make a total dough batch weight of 50 pounds?

Peter

Peter. It is very possibly that the total weight could be 50lbs. Jimmy is a mad man, sometimes getting a straight answer outta him can be difficult. But, he has been my only source of pizza making info until lately.

However, these are the results (pics) from the Lehmann NY calculator batch I made last night. I cooked these today. Oven @ 550 degrees. Overnight refridgerated doughballs. Took 7-8 minutes maybe a couple minutes too long, as they were chewy in texture. 14" pies. take a look

I decided to take the information you got from Jimmy and to assume that he meant a 50-pound batch of dough. Otherwise, the numbers won't work. So, operating on that premise, I used the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html (you can also use the Lehmann dough calculating tool) to come up with a possible dough formulation for a 50-pound batch of dough. Of all the numbers you gave, the ones that appear to be hard and fast and the least disputable are the amount of salt and the amount of oil. So, I built the dough formulation around those specific values. I also increased the amount of cake yeast to 0.75% because I do not believe that one ounce of cake yeast would be enough for a dough that is to be either used the same day or after one or more days of cold fermentation. Also, a golf-ball size of cake yeast would seem to weigh more than one ounce.

In addition to the above changes, I also used a hydration of 58%. That may seem to be on the low side but you will note that the oil in the dough formulation is 6.38%. I have worked with high oil doughs before and if you don't adjust the formula hydration to compensate for the wetness that a lot of oil brings to the dough, you can end up with a very wet dough that can be hard to handle. My practice is to use a combination of water and oil percents that is pretty much equal to the rated absorption value for the flour I am using. That is the same approach that Tom Lehmann recommends. I should also mention that using 58% hydration, the amount of water comes to about 88% of the value that Norma came up with when she weighed one #10 can (the empty Stanislaus 7/11 can) filled pretty much to the top with water. I would imagine that in practice a worker wouldn't completely fill the can with water because it would be cumbersome and awkward to handle the can with water at that level without spilling the water. I suspect that the worker would fill the can just to the point where it is easy to manage. So, the 88% figure doesn't seem to me to be out of whack.

As I noted in the above dough formulation, I did not use a bowl residue compensation. However, if I were to use, say, 1.5%, which is the value I use at home to make my doughs in a stand mixer, the dough formulation becomes:

It is easy to scale either of the above dough formulations to any desired dough batch weight. However, to do so in a way as to replicate what Jimmy does, you would need to know a typical dough ball weight (or weighs for different size pizzas) and the corresponding pizza size(s). Otherwise, you can assume a thickness factor and, using the Thickness Factor option of the dough calculating tool, calculate the amount of ingredients you would need to make the dough for any size and number of pizzas. For example, a typical thickness factor for a NY style might be around 0.085.

It is also possible to redo the above dough formulations to use dry yeast. I can't find any fresh yeast (typically the 0.6 ounce cubes) in any store near me, so I use mainly IDY. Should you decide to try either of the above dough formulations and if you need help converting either or both of the above dough formulations to use either IDY or ADY, I can help you with that conversion (the baker's percents will be different for IDY and ADY).

With respect to the last pizza you made using the Lehmann dough calculating tool, I think I would use less yeast and a longer cold fermentation. That should produce more residual sugar for crust coloration purposes and create more byproducts of fermentation for better crust flavor and a better texture. It is up to you if you want to experiment with a lower thickness factor that is more typical of the NY style.

Pete - You are very wise and I will respect your expert advice. thank you for taking the time to break it all down for me. I am a pizza-psycho, and have alreay made another batch using your adjustments. So I'll post the results soon.

Gret work, fantastic looking pies Sonofapizza! The only glaring error I see is this. http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=11684.0;attach=24870;image

Canned mushrooms? CMON! :P

Haa! I know.... I know. But I've open 10 different varieties of "canned" shrooms, and have found some great tasting, and great texture having specimens. I know how to put fresh sliced shrooms on a pie, it is great that way too. I was just trying to emulate a Jersey pizzeria pie I had back in December. The place was a hole in the wall. The pizza was key though. They used canned mushrooms. I swear to God when I start asking ingredient questions at pizzerias, people act like I'm with the IRS or something. I always have to make em laugh before I get a straight answer out of any pro. The guy said he gets em from a NJ distributor, puts em in a little olive oil and lets sit for a few days, while refrdgerated.

This guy also had a Marsala Pizza that I would've slapped my mother-in-law across the face, just to get a slice of it. J/K about slapping mom, but it was that good! Always the hole in the wall has the best pizza around.. why is that?

Excellent! That would be awesome. If you have time just let me know and we can work something out. I'd love to taste some of your creations. If we don't have time to make pizza we can always hit one of the local joints. :D

Lol, yeah well if you found a good canned mushroom more power to ya, you mentioned the key there in bad consistency, like wet tofu they usually are.

Hey I was so impressed by the recent pics I took a 'vidi' (means a look in Clockwork Orange lingo) at your recipe. I am surprised the veg oil is working better for you, whoda thunk it. I think the result is so good due to your HG four. I have scoured the earth (local stores) and I found one shop with 40 kinds of flour. Great for semolina restocking, but no one has HG flour anywhere so I've only ever used KABF. I also refuse to buy 50 pound online, lol, but one day maybe I'll leave my town again and find some elsewhere. The only other flour I tried was the wrong kind for 550 degrees, 00, but that's a different disastrous tale.

Lol, yeah well if you found a good canned mushroom more power to ya, you mentioned the key there in bad consistency, like wet tofu they usually are.

Hey I was so impressed by the recent pics I took a 'vidi' (means a look in Clockwork Orange lingo) at your recipe. I am surprised the veg oil is working better for you, whoda thunk it. I think the result is so good due to your HG four. I have scoured the earth (local stores) and I found one shop with 40 kinds of flour. Great for semolina restocking, but no one has HG flour anywhere so I've only ever used KABF. I also refuse to buy 50 pound online, lol, but one day maybe I'll leave my town again and find some elsewhere. The only other flour I tried was the wrong kind for 550 degrees, 00, but that's a different disastrous tale.

Cheers on the work!

Thanks Striver. I've been known to walk into a pizza joint er 2, and demand they sell me 5# sack of their flour for $5. It usually works. My buddy just opened his place, so now I'll have the KYROL on tap :P.

I have never tried the 00 type flour. I'd have to visit Italy and eat at a thousand Neapolitano places before I made up my mind on their style. I'm sticking with the HG for now. I figured out one thing for certain: The higher the heat - the more authentic the NY style pies turn out. I did the experiment of taking my dough to a real place. It came out like their pies do. The oven makes the difference. Mine goes to 550, and it's godd enough for home pies. My family are a bunch of pizza snobs. And do due their inherent Greek nature of "telling it like it is", I've had the pleasure of hearing their endless critiques. This great place (pizzamaking.com) actually propelled my pizza making into a consistent brand.

Yeah the 00 is for neopolitan cooking, not for the regular 550 guys like us. I got confused because I saw all the great Varasano type pies, elite NY, and thought that was the way to go. Never mind I use no starter and cooking at 550, lol, well that matters too as it turns out. Now I just make as good as I can with what I have to work with, back to hand kneading after the mixer exploded, sort of liking it better.

On that note I saw "Master Chef" and they had to make fresh pasta this week. Chef Ramsay and his cohorts were watching and speaking of how you need the ''warmth and love of your hands in the dough to feel what's happening". I kind of subscribe to this theory.